literary west
The State of the Western Word
“The Western is dead,” declares writer Johnny D. Boggs. Space devoted to Westerns on bookstore shelves—as well as readership—has been shrinking steadily for years. Except for tales about a certain boy wizard, younger readers just aren’t as interested in picking up a book these days (see our story below for more on that). But dig a little deeper, as Boggs does by speaking with some of today’s top writers, and a more complete picture begins to emerge.
These Western writers let loose with their observations on the genre, and offer a number of examples of how The Western’s influence is finding its way into some unexpected places—as well as branching out in new directions. The Western isn’t dead; it’s just changing with the times. So turn to American Cowboy’s April-May print edition to read Boggs’ thought-provoking piece in its entirety, and continue reading below for some excellent book recommendations from the West’s best writers, more on Boggs, his thoughts on roping in young readers, and five books not to miss in 2008. Happy reading, partner.
Pick of the Prose
The West’s top writers weigh in on their favorite reads
 Name: Win Blevins
Credits: author of Stone Song, a fictional biography of Crazy Horse, and Give Your Heart to the Hawks
Favorite Western Novel: A River Runs Through It, by Norman Maclean
Favorite Western Writer Today: No dominant writer, but favorite books by living writers include: Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya; Milagro Beanfield War by John Nichols; Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry; Stone Song by Win Blevins; Dance Hall of the Dead by Tony Hillerman; The Rounders by Max Evans; House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday; The Good Old Boys by Elmer Kelton
 Name: John Jakes
Credits: 2007 Owen Wister Award for Lifetime Achievement (Western Writers of America); The Kent Family Chronicles (8 volumes); The North and South Trilogy
Favorite Western Novel: The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters by Robert Lewis Taylor
Favorite Western Writer Today: Cormac McCarthy, closely followed by Larry
McMurtry
 Name: Michael McGarrity
Credits: Author of 11 mystery novels set in New Mexico; Anthony Award and Spur Award nominee; recipient of the New Mexico Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts.
Favorite Western Novel: Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
Favorite Western Writer Today: Tony Hillerman; “Hillerman brings the Southwest to life by masterfully evoking place, history, culture, and characters. His novels blend and juxtapose the Navajo way within the context of the modern West.”
 Name: John D. Nesbitt
Credits: Two-time Wyoming Arts Council Creative Writing Fellowship Winner, Author of Raven Springs and Death at Dark Water
Favorite Western Novel: The Big Sky by A.B. Guthrie Jr.
Favorite Western Writer Today: “Robert Roripaugh of Laramie, Wyo., is an all-around top hand, writing well-crafted, true-to-the-heart works of literature, notably Honor Thy Father (novel), The Legend of Billy Jenks (short stories), and Learn to Love the Haze (poems).”
 Name: Spring Warren
Credits: Author of Turpentine
Favorite Western Novel: “Gary Paulsen’s Clabbered Dirt, Sweet Eart. Paulsen winnows details until the reader feels the oak handle of the shovel and the muscle’s complaint after mucking out the barn. This remarkable story is tribute to the unending, worthy toil of rural life.”
Favorite Western Writer Today: Louise Erdrich; “Erdrich writes about the efforts to keep a home through generations, as well as the attempts of the newly arrived to belong. These stories of relationships between people, and with the places they light and last, reflect the West of yesterday as well as describe struggles that are ongoing today.”
 Name: Peter Brandvold
Credits: Acclaimed author of Bullets Over Bedlam (Berkley) and The Romantics (Forge); also writes under the pen name Frank Leslie for Signet
Favorite Western Novel: Lord Grizzly by Frederick Manfred
Favorite Western Writer Today: H.A. DeRosso; “Actually, an old pulp writer who's being reprinted today by Leisure. No one writes darker, more psychologically acute, existential Westerns about men on the knife-edge of both physical and psychological destruction. Riveting. His best book is simply titled .44.”
 Name: Cotton Smith
Credit: Award-winning author of twelve novels, including Blood of Bass Tillman,
Stands a Ranger and Blood Brothers
Favorite Western Novel: The Adventures of Johnny Vermillion by Loren D. Estleman
Favorite Western Writer Today: “Loren D. Estleman is truly a writer’s writer. His stories jump with energy, with color, with plot twists, and with relevance. They should be required reading in every English class in America’s schoolrooms.”
Other Favorite Western Authors and Books: Johnny D. Boggs, Camp Ford; Tony Hillerman, Skeleton Man; Elmer Kelton, The Good Old Boys; Don Coldsmith, Raven Mocker; Owen Parry, Faded Coat of Blue; Matt Braun, Dakota; Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove
 Name: Tim Champlin
Credit: Author of 26 published novels. Two recent titles: Cold Cache and The Blaze of Noon
Favorite Western Novel: Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. Second favorite: The Cowboy and the Cossack by Clair Huffaker
Favorite Western Writer Today: Loren Estleman; “Loren's prose is sharp-edged and his original metaphors and similes force fresh images into the mind's eye. He makes his stories come to life. Nobody falls asleep reading Estleman.”
 Name: Matt Braun
Credits: Western Writers of America Spur Award for The Kincaids and Dakota, and WWA Wister Award for Lifetime Achievement in Western Literature
Favorite Western Novel: Lonesome Dove—the finest novel ever written about the American West
Favorite Western Writer Today: Larry McMurtry; “The novels written by Larry McMurtry on the Old West are what every writer strives to achieve. His sense of time and place and his superb rendering of characters are unsurpassed in Western literature.”
 Name: C.J. Box
Credits: Award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of Free Fire and Blue Heaven, plus six other novels.
Favorite Western Novel: Little Big Man by Thomas Berger
Favorite Western Writer Today: “Although many might now consider him a Western writer, because his novels are set in the contemporary west, Tony Hillerman built the bridge from the traditional Western to the contemporary mainstream Western crime fiction novel of which many of us now take advantage.”
 Name: Johnny D. Boggs
Credits: Spur- and Western Heritage Wrangler Award-winning author of Camp Ford, Northfield and Spark on the Prairie
Favorite Western Novel: The Big Sky by A.B. Guthrie Jr.
Favorite Western Writer Today: “I don’t think any writer captures the life of today’s American Indian better than Sherman Alexie. His prose is completely overpowering, from The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian—which, by the way, won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature—to Flight, two of the best novels I’ve read in a long, long time.”
More on Johnny D. Boggs
Reared on a farm near Timmonsville, S.C., Johnny D. Boggs wrote his first story for a third grade English assignment. By the time he was in high school, he had his future mapped out: “I would major in journalism, work as a sportswriter, and write fiction on the side, eventually quitting the day job to write novels full time.”
Right on track, he earned that degree in journalism, worked for newspapers in Dallas and Fort Worth, and in 1998 began writing full time. He is the author of 32 novels. Spark On The Prairie: The Trial Of The Kiowa Chiefs, won the Western Heritage Wrangler Award in 2004. Camp Ford won a Spur Award from Western Writers of America in 2006 and was named a finalist for Best Historical Fiction in the New Mexico Book Awards.
In 2007, Northfield received the Milton F. Perry Award for Best Book selected by the National James-Younger Gang and The Hart Brand was a Spur Award finalist for Best Western Juvenile Novel. His novel Ten And Me was a Spur Award finalist in 2000. Selected as Southwest Books of the Year are: Great Murder Trials of the Old West (2003), Law of the Land: The Trial of Billy the Kid (2004); and Walk Proud, Stand Tall (2006). He has also published 30 short stories, including “A Piano at Dead Man’s Crossing,” which won a Spur Award in 2002.
His latest novel, Killstraight, will be released in June by Five Star. Boggs, who makes his home in Santa Fe with wife, Lisa, and son, Jack, will take over as president of Western Writers of America in June. His Web site can be found at www.johnnydboggs.com.
5 WESTERNS TO READ IN 2008
Shavetail by Thomas Cobb
Teenager Ned Thorne, who is fleeing his Connecticut past, lies about his age and joins the Army in the early 1870s, hoping to prove his worth in the brutal Arizona Territory in Cobb’s first novel since his 1987 debut, Crazy Heart. (Scribner)
The Black Dove by Steve Hockensmith
Cowboy brothers Gustav “Old Red” and Otto “Big Red” Amlingmeyer find themselves out of luck in San Francisco and solving another mystery using the methods of
their idol, the late, great Sherlock Holmes, in another “Holmes on the Range” story. (St. Martin’s Minotaur)
The Trespassers by Andrew J. Fenady
A beautiful woman leads four soldiers of fortune into Mexico to dig up $5 million in Confederate gold. All they have to do is steal a Gatling gun and survive bandits, Yaqui Indians, Mexican revolutionaries—and each other. (Leisure, April)
Killstraight by Johnny D. Boggs
In the 1880s, a Comanche returns to the reservation after several years east at an Indian boarding school and tries to find out who he really is, and prove that his boyhood friend was unjustly hanged for murder. (Five Star, June)
Dreams Beneath Your Feet by Win Blevins
Sam Morgan packs up mixed-blood family and friends to trek to the land of dreams, California, but Hawaiian renegade Kanaka Joe makes their journey a nightmare in the final installment of the Spur Award-winning author’s mountain man series. (Forge, Fall).
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Roping in young readers is key to The Western’s future
Americans are finding less time to read, recent surveys show, and that’s one problem Western literature faces with every other genre.
The key for survival might be in attracting younger readers, but that’s easier said than done.
“I feel that students today are not exposed to as much study of history as we were in my generation,” says Elmer Kelton (The Pumpkin Rollers). “They know little about the Old West. Many today do not even know much—and care less—about World War II, which to them seems as far in the past as the Civil War was to me when I was their age, which indeed it is. The old West is considered to have been in the 19th Century, and we are in the 21st. Thus the impression is that it all happened two centuries ago.”
Judy Alter (Sam Houston Is My Hero) agrees.
“The young-adult audience is fun to write for, but it’s not much of a market for the Western these days,” she says. “The Harry Potter series let fantasy out of the closet, and kids really flock to that.”
The first step, of course, is getting kids to read, and then keep them reading. J.K. Rowling (the Harry Potter series) certainly proved that’s possible, and Newbery winners such as Gary Paulsen (Hatchet) and Richard Peck (On the Wings of Heroes) reveal a range of storytelling skills that have hooked many younger readers. Native American writer Sherman Alexie has tried his hand in the young-adult market with a contemporary look at growing up Indian in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.
So ... how do we turn those young readers on to the West?
“If someone could find the right ‘formula’—Western fantasy, maybe?—the Young Adult market could build us a new audience of readers,” Alter says.
Adds Kelton: “I frankly don’t know how we can get them enthused about the Western as a genre except to keep writing the best stories we can, and hope that somehow —because they have not been exposed to it much—the Western will seem new and fresh to them at some point.”
— Johnny D. Boggs |
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